"Chevron-sponsored Permian Proud is providing community news (and corporate propaganda) in one of Texas' most news-starved regions."
"At first glance, the story looks like something your aunt might post on her Facebook from her local newspaper. “Midland County judge ‘pardons’ jaywalking puppy,” the headline reads, with a photo of a startled-looking Pomeranian behind a microphone, seemingly on a witness stand. The post details how a Texas judge found a dog underneath his truck in the parking lot of his courthouse and used social media to find the owner.
But the piece isn’t a quirky feel-good story from a local paper. According to data hidden on the site but provided in the site’s social preview cards, the puppy article is written by Mike Aldax, a man who lives more than 1,000 miles away from Midland. The entire site is bankrolled by oil giant Chevron; since 2014, Aldax, who works at San Francisco-based public relations firm Singer Associates, has also written for a Chevron-funded newspaper in California called the Richmond Standard.
The new website, called Permian Proud, is another example in a long history of the oil giant using paid media to disseminate its messaging in crucial geographic areas—this time, in the oil-rich Permian Basin in Texas. And Chevron is rolling out its site in one of the most local news-starved regions of a state that has seen one-third of its newspapers close over the past two decades."
